RMI activation problem under LINUX

Question

When I try to run the activation example from the RMI tutorial, I get the following exception:
Exception in thread "main" java.rmi.activation.ActivationException: ActivationSystem not running; nested exception is:
java.rmi.NotBoundException: java.rmi.activation.ActivationSystem
at java.rmi.activation.ActivationGroup.getSystem(ActivationGroup.java:453)
at examples.activation.Setup.main(Setup.java:68)
Caused by: java.rmi.NotBoundException: java.rmi.activation.ActivationSystem
at sun.rmi.registry.RegistryImpl.lookup(RegistryImpl.java:106)
at sun.rmi.registry.RegistryImpl_Skel.dispatch(Unknown Source)
at sun.rmi.server.UnicastServerRef.oldDispatch(UnicastServerRef.java:342)
at sun.rmi.server.UnicastServerRef.dispatch(UnicastServerRef.java:207)
at sun.rmi.transport.Transport$1.run(Transport.java:148)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at sun.rmi.transport.Transport.serviceCall(Transport.java:144)
at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport.handleMessages(TCPTransport.java:460)
at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport$ConnectionHandler.run(TCPTransport.java:701)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:536)
at sun.rmi.transport.StreamRemoteCall.exceptionReceivedFromServer(StreamRemoteCall.java:247)
at sun.rmi.transport.StreamRemoteCall.executeCall(StreamRemoteCall.java:223)
at sun.rmi.server.UnicastRef.invoke(UnicastRef.java:350)
at sun.rmi.registry.RegistryImpl_Stub.lookup(Unknown Source)
at java.rmi.Naming.lookup(Naming.java:84)
at java.rmi.activation.ActivationGroup.getSystem(ActivationGroup.java:449)
... 1 more
This is with J2SE 1.4.1 on RedHat 7.3 running a vanilla 2.4.18 kernel. I'm running everything out of shell scripts to keep from getting bitten by typos.
Here's the punchline: The identical code works just fine on RedHat 6.2 (kernel 2.2.14 or so) - same 1.4.1.
Netstat tells me there is something listening on the appropriate ports, and output from strace suggests that there is some traffic back and forth to the server. There is no firewall running - I unloaded ipchains in the interest of paranoia. (There is firewalling running on the working system, go figure...)
Help? I can post more details if that would help resolve the problem.

Answer 1

I wrote
When I try to run the activation example from the RMI
tutorial, I get the following exception:<snip>
The key was this:
The identical code works just
fine on RedHat 6.2 (kernel 2.2.14 or so) - same 1.4.1."Identical" really was - I'd used a tar archive to make a complete copy of the code running on the RH 6.2 system. The copy included the file log/Logfile.1, written by rmid (or rmiregistry). This contains lots of IP addresses; I suspect it's more than a log. Since the original machine and the clone are separated by a firewall, attempts by the clone to contact the original failed.
Deleting the "log" directory made the problem go away.